5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Refugees seek protection in countries of the Global North and South, where they often experience legal, social, and political exclusion. Neither authoritarian, semi-democratic nor democratic order hardly enables political membership for refugees, as opportunities to meaningfully participate in host societies are lacking. While wealthy democratic states tend to repel refugees, parallel social struggles for greater participation are coalescing and gaining momentum. International organizations have worked to establish refugee participation as a global norm. At this juncture, new organizational models have emerged that translate the notion of refugee participation into practice, a process full of tensions due to heterogeneous actors and (often) divergent ideas of democratic participation and transformation.

Simultaneously, new organizational models that enable and foster the participation of refugees are also being constructed in hybrid political regimes. Here, diverse refugee-led initiatives are arising, which mobilize refugees' knowledge, experience, and resources. These organizational initiatives are both supported and hindered by state orders, but they also have the potential to influence these orders.

In this session, we aim to explore how refugees’ participation is practically organized in locally contingent settings, and how these localized alternatives impact statehood in the context of global inequalities. Studying the organization of participation and the modes refugees and their allies co-produce knowledge is relevant for sociologists and practitioners who aim at reinventing the democratic space and its contemporary organization. Specifically, examining the potential of refugee organization and participation in transforming can bring much-needed knowledge about new, participatory forms of organizing and inform regulation and policy-making.